Nielsen Flute Concerto – Ting-Wei Chen

May 8th 2025 at 19:00

Richard Strauss – Till Eulenspiegel
Carl Nielsen – Flute Concerto
Tchaikovsky – Sleeping Beauty: Suite

Oslo Philharmonic
Ting-Wei Chen – flute
Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider – conductor

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider conducts music based on legends and fairytales: Richard Strauss’ tone poem Till Eulenspiegel and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite. Ting-Wei Chen is the soloist in Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto.

According to legend, the charming swindler and prankster Till Eulenspiegel lived in the 14th century and is the hero of almost a hundred folk tales. In the tone poem Till Eulenspiegel from 1896, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) cheerfully portrays him with horn and clarinet.

Till Eulenspiegel is one of Strauss’ most humorous works, as full of inventions and surprises as the main character. Till dresses up, flirts with the ladies and makes fun of the scholars before he is put on trial and sentenced to death. The ending is ambiguous – does he manage to escape?

In 1921, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) was captivated by a concert with the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. He knew the musicians, and wrote a piece for the quiet in which each one is described with music. He wanted to write one solo concerto for each – he managed two and started with the flutist.

“Eventually, the orchestral movement also becomes fuller and more moving, but this does not last long, because the flute cannot deny its nature (…) the composer must therefore adapt to its gentle nature,” Nielsen wrote about the Flute Concerto from 1926, a gentle and cheerful work in which there is a storm in between.

“The music from this ballet will become one of my best works. The subject is so poetic, so well suited to music, that I was entirely engrossed in composing it, and wrote with an ardor and passion which always results,” wrote Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1841-1893) during the work with Sleeping Beauty.

With Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky set a completely new standard for the ballet genre and greatly raised the status of ballet music. Sleeping Beauty premiered in 1890. The Sleeping Beauty Suite, composed after his death, features five orchestral excerpts from the ballet.

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Lumas Winds

May 12th 2025 at 20:00

Programme
Mikhail Glinka – Overture from Ruslan and Lyudmila arr. B Hartnell-Booth
Oliver Knussen – Three Little Fantasies Op.6A
Valerie Coleman – Afro-Cuban Concerto
Luciano Berio – Opus Number Zoo
Archie John – Fanfare: Branches of Joy
Gavin Higgins – After Fallout
Amy Beach Pastorale for Wind Quintet Op.151
Endre Szervánszky Wind Quintet No.1
Lalo Schifrin La Nouvelle Orleans

Lumas Winds
Beth Stone – flute
Christopher Vettraino – oboe
Rennie Sutherland – clarinet
Florence Plane – bassoon
Benjamin Hartnell-Booth – horn

In this programme, Lumas Winds present the wind quintet in a kaleidoscopic light with music crossing various styles and forms. Works linked by narration and poetry; the exploration of Hungarian folk tunes; jazz from New Orleans; the landscape of New Hampshire; and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Featuring recent works by Gavin Higgins, Valerie Coleman and Archie John.

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Daniel Handsworth in Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto

May 14th 2025 at 18:00 – 19:00